Engineer's Day - June 4

So being the whiny old bloke that I am, years ago I was whining at my beautiful wife over the fact that there seem to be many other profession-days (Secretary's Day, Teacher's Day, Firefighter's Day, and many others including my favorite: Nurse's Day), but no Engineer's Day here in the US.

How can there be no Engineer's Day? India has one, as do many other countries: Argentina, Singapore, Colombia, Iran...). I'm not trying to take anything away from the Secretaries (without whom...wait...I don't have one and never have), or Teachers (probably one of the very toughest and most important professions in the world) or other day-dedicated professions (least of all the Nurse...my personal favorite). BUT, where would we be without engineers?

We'd be living in caves, praying that a stray lightning bolt would spark a fire so that we might be able to be warm for a while. All the little pieces of technology, right down to the brick, would not be possible without the engineer. TVs, Stoves, Dish Washers, Bicycles, Cars, Computers, the Internet, Bowls, Toilets, Running Water, Fans, AC, etc, etc, etc ad nauseum.

So I whined about this long enough that my lovely wife got sick of listening to me, and in our house we've established Engineer's Day as June 4.

So, this coming Monday (I hope I gave you a decent enough head start), June 4, give your friendly neighborhood engineer a big "Happy Engineer's Day". They may seem stand-offish, but for the most part, we're just really shy.

Quick engineer's joke: Do you know the difference between a introverted engineer and an extroverted engineer? The extroverted engineer looks at *your* shoes when he talks to you!

I'm hoping it catches on...we need to make a national day of it!

The Merry Month of May

I'm hoping that these protracted absences of mine don't become a habit. It's not that I don't care or want to pop in every now and then, sometimes to unleash an uncharitable thought on the commute, or other times to share a laugh or whatever. Here's what's been happening:

I was last in here, apparently, on April 29. On this particular night, the wife and I had come home from a weekend away - just she and I - as it was our 21th anniversary that weekend. We still like each other, so we spent some alone time in the big city. Not that we really did anything spectacular; nice dinner and walk-about.

Within a week of our anniversary is my beautiful wife's birthday. She turned 28 again this year (and people are starting to ask questions about why I appear to be dating a child...). Then there's nurse's day, followed in rapid succession with Mother's day (a very belated happy mom's day to all you lovely moms). I tried really hard to make this Gatling gun of wife appreciation as enjoyable as possible for her.

As usual, this effort put this particular old crotchety bugger in a catatonic state for a week or more. If I had a heart it probably wouldn't be such a drain on me, but as it is, doing nice things for people really saps my life force. Obligatory note: for her, it's worth it. :)

So after this landmine walk, I then cranked up my training to face two of the most stressful, fear-inducing activities that man can put himself through, other than the wedding day and potty training.

I've been interviewing for a new job, and I done got it. Interviewing for and transitioning to a new workplace is a very stressful activity for many folks. I've done this a number of times in my career, so it's kind of old hat, but it is interesting how your stomach lurches in direct proportion to how much you think you want that job.

This interview process started with an "I've got nothing to lose" approach. I'm already working, and am as stable as can be there, so there are no nerves in the first couple of interview rounds. If it works, it works, and if not, no big deal. As the process moved along, however, and I decided that this would be a good job for me (closer to home, more money, bigger title, etc, etc...), I did start to get the jitters a bit.

I don't think that anyone is truly at ease during an interview process, no matter how high up the corporate ladder you might climb. If you can convince yourself that getting the job is not a huge deal (though it might be), then I think that you'll do better in the face-to-face interviews, since you'll be more comfortable. Your thoughts will flow more naturally, and you'll ask better questions and give better answers. You do want to convey interest in the job, if your interested in the job, but you also want to be comfortable, so try to convince yourself that you won't implode for not getting that job.

I've finally gotten that Principal Engineer title that I would have been glad to tell you that I richly deserve, so that's good. I'll actually be walking to work, so that's great! *whew*...time to breath again.

Oops...spoke too soon! The other great fear inducing topic: I was asked to speak at a national conference on the topic of Medical Device Safety. Public speaking ranks right with death, according to studies that I've seen. For a hermit-like introvert such as myself, it is certainly something to challenge.

I done did that too, though...it's what you do with your fear, eh? I wasn't alone, and the crowd was not large; this, combined with the fact that I actually know the material quite well made the affair tenable. The two other fellows with whom I shared the podium are experts in this public speaking stuff, as they are consultants with decades of experience who travel all about the country lecturing and teaching.

I did ask one of them how long you have to do this speaking before the nerves settle down, and I thought that his answer might help more than just me: he said, "They never really do."

Interesting, that. Be aware that when you're at a conference, or a seminar, or maybe even in school, the fellow or lady speaking at the front of the class probably spent the morning practicing their Lamaze breathing, or meditating, or performing other self-calming activities to help them get through their day.

It's apparently not easy for all but those few gifted people...there's one or two in every field. For the bulk of us normal folks, call it nerves, excitement, butterflies, a rush, panic, whatever you like: the prospect of public speaking starts adrenaline pumping into your system, and while everyone responds a little differently to that adrenaline, we all respond the same.

Other than that one or two who can piss us all off by being 'perfectly comfortable' in front of a mass of strangers!

Sorry for ignoring you folks for so long! One week left at the current job, then off to the new employ. From here out, I'm not taking any action items from meetings. :)

Before signing off for the moment, I'd like to acknowledge that I've landed with one new reader, and this one seems to have super powers! Awesome! Welcome, Super Earthling...I come in pieces.

:)

Why do We Have to Learn This?

This is one of those bullshit questions that are asked usually of kids in school, and I've heard it quite a lot lately, in one form or another, almost universally in relation to taking a particular math or science class:

"When am I ever going to use this?!?!"

Often followed by "I'm gonna be a basketball star!" or "...rock star!"" or "...novelist!"

I have seen suggestions that you're only forced into this stuff in school to exercise your brain. Or for torture.

This whole line of questioning and thinking really bugs me, and has for decades. Naturally, I wasn't 'in the room' when the folks who made the scholastic curriculum did so, so I don't actually KNOW why they put these courses in our way through K-12, but I've got what I think are some pretty iron-clad thoughts on the subject...

Let's start with the most basic, fundamental, and shallow thought: the reason that you whiners need to take algebra (for instance...could be physics or geometry) is the same reason that I had to take friggin' ART class (and music class). As I mention above, I don't actually know what the reason is, but these points are opposite sides of the same reason.

Trying to teach a kid like who I was music and art is like trying to teach rain to fall up. I have never been able to hear individual sounds in the aggregate (like hearing the flute in the orchestra), and I don't have an artistic bone in my body. I can't even draw a straight line when I have a ruler (I know: art seldom requires straight lines...my point is that I've never been able to make an image in my mind come out of the end of a pencil; I'm going to leave it to you to extend the metaphor).

The next reason in my mind is that when you tell me, "...I'm gonna be a fillintheblank!", you don't actually know that. Remember, we're talking about high school kids for the most part: those folks in the prime of their life who know the full contents of the internet (what used to be the encyclopedia, dictionary, & atlases combined), have the wisdom of the ages, and can see their own future with crystal clarity.

Right?

Here's some wisdom from the curmudgeon: you DON'T know everything. You CAN'T see your own future. While perhaps you won't ever NEED these motes of knowledge, you can never tell when they might be USEFUL. You might just find someday that knowing a bit of geometry will enable you to identify when a carpenter or carpet salesman is trying to soak you for more money than a job is worth, and unless you're made out of money, those extra few hundred or thousand dollars could actually make a difference in your life.

And on the sports angle, let's take the NFL and do a tiny bit of math: 32 teams with 65 players each is 2,080 individual players in the NFL. Add the practice squads, I'll estimate 4,000 men in the USA who make a living playing football in the NFL. Childstats.gov says there are 76.1 million school-aged children in the USA. Basic interpolation suggests that one third of these are in high school: 25.37 million kids in high school.

Half of these are boys: 12.185 million.

Wild Ass Guess: 6 million are healthy enough to be playing sports, 3 million are playing football.

3 million football playing high school boys, working for 4,000 spots: 1 in 750 of you are going to actually play professional football in the USA. Not bad odds, really...better than I thought when I started that math, BUT, this assumes that you're not hurt on your way to the NFL. Physical injury is a real probability there. I think that this basic analysis applies to all sports-minded students, and I guess my council is: have a back-up plan.

What I think is the ACTUAL reason you need to take those classes is pretty simple: exposure. It's important to expose everyone to math, science, art, literature, music, philosophy, wood working (and other industrial arts), language (starting with Latin), history, politics, writing, sports, and all the other topics that increase our awareness of the universe around us.

For one thing, if you're never exposed to a subject, how could you ever possibly know whether you've got any talents in that subject, or whether you'd like to pursue it? If you never took an art class, you might never know that you're good at it, and you might never meet your muse. Should you never meet your muse, you'll never been truly brilliant, successful, or even happy.

It may well be that you find that you enjoy math or biology, but if you didn't have those classes in school, you'd never know, and you'd miss that boat. Can you say, "You want fries with that?"?

Between the age of 5 or so until you're 18 - 13 short years (in retrospect, of course), you have to be exposed to a sufficient depth of all of these subjects to arm yourself with enough knowledge and experience to be able to make some decisions that are going to affect the entire rest of your life. AND are bound to affect the lives of your life partner as well as any kids that you might end up with and parents that might eventually have to depend upon you.

We have to be exposed to a little of everything in those few years. And they are not full years, either! In the USA, kids go to school for a total of 180 days per year, on average, which is close enough to half of the year to say that the 13 years mentioned above is actually more like 6.5 years. Not a lot, really.

In my mind, it's all about exposure.

Finally, don't fool yourself too well about never needing whatever subject it is that you're lamenting. If you ever DO get to be that professional sports star, you should know that the sporting world is full of statistics, which is math. Your contracts are going to be chock-full of math, in the form of money. If you can't do basic math, you're going to have to leave that to your agent, and you're kidding yourself if you think that your agent has only your best interests at heart.

If you ever take an interest in DIY projects, geometry is going to be your friend.

Will you NEED the knowledge that comes out of those "useless" classes? No, not necessarily, but you'll be surprised where that knowledge might come in useful.

Ruined Words - Seduce

I like the word 'seduce', but you can't seem to use it anymore in anything other than a sexual sense. The original meaning of the word was to lead astray, coming straight out of the Latin.

MW gives me three definitions:

1. to persuade to disobedience or disloyalty
2. to lead astray usually by persuasion or false promises
3. to carry out the physical seduction of : entice to sexual intercourse

According to the OED (Online Etymology Dictionary), the sexual connotation showed up in the 1550s, which should have been well more than a thousand years after the original. Nowadays it seems the only version in use is the third - the last to show up.

I had used the term on a teen lately when I told him that his "friends"  were not friends at all, as they had seduced him into doing something that he knew was wrong. He got all 'wait a minute...there's nothing sexual between me and them' on me.

Oy. Just another example of a word that we can't really use anymore. Even though Darth Vader was 'seduced by the dark side'. Folks seem to understand that...or do they? Is that another case of "once you go black...?" :)